


Devil-May-Care

by archea2



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Reichenbach Falls, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:52:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1417604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The gun in Jim's mouth has a history. So does Jim's heart, when it comes to the man who once held it and fired.</p><p>Contains a touch of Sherlock/Lestrade, but only very faintly implied so I haven't tagged it. (Tell me if you think I should.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil-May-Care

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill a "100 Word" prompt offered by Notluvulungtime - "100 days of loving Lestrade (and he doesn't know it)" - to celebrate my one hundredth follower on Tumblr.:)

**19 February 2012**.

 

‘Jim, that’s –‘ But even an atheist like Moran knows better than to infringe the first theologal virtue: lack of faith in Jim means hell, with a side dish of slow. Instead, he goes for the safety  catch. ‘- not like you, all that going public.’

 

‘Lic-lic-lickety-lick,’ Jim sings-songs, wetting his lips. His tongue keeps on darting from his mouth corner as he drives the scissors deftly through the newspaper.

 

Moran takes advantage of a beautiful friendship and his upcoming mission to steal a peep. His eyes widen a little as he does.

 

‘Ah,’ says Jim, holding the picture between  his thumb and finger. An old one, that, dating back to a year  or so; a man’s head and shoulders in a shabby overcoat. ‘A rarity, Sebastian. Public, did you say? Well, it took three corpses to bring him out under the flashes, but _so_   worth it. Look at him. He's good, he's very good; it glows, that goodness of his, even in black and white. Grey and white. Isn’t he _scrumptious_?’

 

Moran snorts. ‘That old sadsack? What, he your dirty little secret?’

 

What comes next between them falls before either mind can spark an ‘it’s coming’. One moment Jim’s fingertips are lying on the photograph in a drowsy caress; the next, Sebastian’s throat is wheezing and folding in on its own pulse. Jim raises the scissor blades slowly between them, relishing the soft metallic gleam.

 

‘They say every dark cloud has a silver lining. And my mind, Sebastian -  my mind can grow very, _very_ cloudy at times.’

 

 **7 March  2012**.

 

‘Well,’ the young mole says importantly. He’s a clean-shaven, close-cropped, snotty little prick with a vague air about him of the late Carl Powers. Jim has his fate at the ready; he could swear the little tyke smells faintly of chlorine.

 

‘Well, there’s not much to tell. He spends an awful lot of time at his desk. Or out driving with Donovan.’

 

Jim’s feet are on his desk. He is eating an eclair with very dainty manners.

 

‘Sergeant Sally Clarissa Desiree Donovan?’ _Desiree_. There’s a green-eyed monster in the pit of his soul, battling the vanilla custard.  ‘Are they –?’

 

‘Christ, no.’ And the little snot has the audacity to look as if that’s a good one. ‘She's in his team, granted, but he’s definitely not batting for hers.’ He winks. ‘Mine, more likely.’

 

Death by eczema _and_ drowning, Jim reminds himself, biting into his eclair.

 

‘But if you want my opinion, he’s got a crush on Holmes. Can’t take his eyes off him on cases. Took his hand under a blanket once – so we all took pictures. Here, look –‘ and the green-eyed, hell-faced, doomed little troll actually takes his phone out.

 

‘Fuck off,’ Jim says, not looking up.

 

‘But – what about my orders, then?’

 

This time Moriarty does lift his gaze, prior to speaking the one sentence which gave him such a naughty, full-bodied tickle once – which, if he’s honest with himself (who else?) made him lose his heart long after he'd dispensed with his sanity.

 

‘Try not to commit suicide,’ he says, and there it goes, that succulent little thrill when the face before him clams up and whitens. Oh Greg, you _genius_.

 

 **7 March 2012**.

 

It takes a king to meet a king. And so Jim Moriarty adjusts the heavy crown on his head and checks his eyeliner in the jagged ruins of glass one last time.

 

When the door breaks open in sound and fury, and the men pour in, his heart is singing louder than the entire Scala. Giddied, giggling, he lets Lestrade’s hands disrobe him, tilt his head roughly aside, grasp his arms and twists them into a safe lock in his back, Lestrade’s panting breath wine to his ear.

 

‘No rush,’ he  told them, eager to take in his well-earned sight – Lestrade's thighs, still taut and quivering from running out to him, not Sherlock; Lestrade's sweat, as if the man's very humanity was running down his face. ‘No rush.’

 

_I have waited an entire year for you. I could wait ten more for a lick off your cheek._

  

 **19 April 2012**.

 

For their next rendez-vous, he puts on a light grey suit with a Gucci silver tie. Signs, codes, subtext – all of Jim's life, they’ve served him well. While waiting to be fetched, he slips a mint refresher into his pocket. You never know who might be asked to step down from the witness stand and identify him.

 

Lestrade doesn’t even step _in_. They read his written testimony to the court.

 

Fucking Sherlock does, and calls him a spider.

 

 _And_ gets the credit for Jim’s arrest. Un-fucking-believable.

 

(Yes, yes, his message. Can’t these morons read between lines? Must he etch them himself into their thick heads and even thicker eyeballs? _Get Sherlock_. IRONY, peons. I-R-O-N-Y. And his good man, his silver charm, not even summoned? Where is justice in this world?)

 

**24 April 2012**

 

Jim sends Greg three anonymous bouquets by way of apology. Jonquil ( _desire for affection returned_ ), Iris ( _faith and hope_ , with a pun thrown in – Greg loves puns), Marigold ( _cruelty, jealousy_ ).

 

Greg texts Sherlock that his divorce is now a ticked box. Perhaps floriography was a mistake.

 

‘Children?’ he asks Carl the Second, his forehead creased dreamily. This could be the proverbial stone, killing two lovebirds with a throw.

 

‘Oh, in-deed.’ Fucking little twerp never forgets his p’s and q’s, even in The Presence. ‘He gets mad when there's one involved – supervises every step, not a stone unturned until… what? What’s the joke?’

 

Jim goes through his options with his usual cunning, but his heart betrays him in the end.  Signs and codes and clues and subtext, and he should really, really have learnt his lesson from the Adler woman. But the little girl has a French name, too.

 

**12 May 2012**

 

‘IOU’, he tells Sherlock.

 

He does. He owes Lestrade to Sherlock: never, in a thousand years, would he have noticed the detective if his inquiries into Sherlock’s past had not unearthed that ordinary, inordinary man. With his once-round face (Jim loves round faces) now leaner after half a lifetime of incessant efforts, but  still radiant with the passion for work well done (Jim approves), and the country burr in his voice that brings a little extra friction and heat to the air in his hours of fretting (Jim makes sure he gets plenty of those).

 

He is grateful to Sherlock.

 

All the more when Sherlock lets Jim kill Greg’s trust in him so easily.

 

**23 May 2012**

 

Sherlock’s face, while he listens to Jim’s little tale, is priceless. Worth the Tower itself and all the jewels it has ever hosted.

 

‘No charge,’ he tells the man, his smile a slash of white, a night sign, incandescent and grateful.

 

**25 May 2012**

 

Sherlock breaks Jim’s hidden camera the moment Lestrade’s police car shrills itself into Baker Street.

 

‘Losers weepers,’ Jim tuts.

 

It is fortunate that Sherlock missed the bug in the trophy-cow’s earphones, because Jim would have been sad to miss Lestrade’s recitation of the Right to Silence. He listens to the recording again and again, dismissing the Holmes-Watson extravaganza  with a wave of the hand, until Greg’s words are bouncing against the walls of his skull.

 

**30 May 2012**

 

‘Lestrade,’ Sherlock says at last, and Jim’s smile shows up again, resplendent. _This_ is the final problem, and it’s about to be solved.

 

Not far away in the City, the little mole is waiting for a command that, Godot-like, will never come. A good man is hard to find, but a good man is easy to lose as long as the loss is shared.

 

The gun, his gun, has been in Lestrade’s hands. One shot, the country mice had told Jim, cowering before his not-so-veiled threat of investigation pending the illicit use of police resources, blah, blah, blah (does Sherlock really think he’s the only one with a uniform kink?). He’d asked to see the weapon, make sure that it had been returned and the bullet with it, found half-buried in the Devon ground. _He_ never returned either.

 

Up on the roof, through the thin leather of his glove, the metal gives off a faint comfort of warmth. Lestrade must have wrapped his two hands around it before his one and only shot. A legend, the cops said, a gigantic, monstrous legend. 

 

‘Let me show you, my darling,’ Jim Moriarty thinks, and silences one hundred days of longing.

 


End file.
